1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to presenting information during a draft, and more particularly, to presenting attributes of a plurality of players and a plurality of teams in a roster grid.
2. Description of the Related Art
Interest in various sports has grown in recent years. With the advent and growth of the Internet, sports and especially, fantasy sports have evolved into a hobby for millions of users due to the broad reach of the Internet and the exponential growth of sports fan base across the world. Fantasy sport is a game where participants act as fantasy team managers/owners with each participant building a team of players that competes with other similarly built teams based on the statistics generated by individual players or teams of a specific professional sport.
Sports fans across the world emulate the actual professional sports by participating in online draft periodically in which each user picks players to build his/her team. One of the common type of draft is a standard online draft. The standard online draft is one of the easier and widely available draft type for users to participate in. In standard online draft, users acting as team managers coordinate a specific date/time to be online and drafting. Each team takes turns in drafting players. Another common type of draft that is popular with the sports fans is an auction draft. Auction draft is usually preferred by users that have more experience playing online fantasy draft. In the auction draft, each user is provided with a specific budget with which the user builds his/her team. Each user is allowed to nominate as well as bid on players on the “auction block”. During a game season, each player is awarded points based on their performance in the professional sport and the fantasy team with the most points is declared a winner. Auction style drafting is popular with experienced users over other styles of drafting as it generates a level of competition and excitement during the draft process and instant gratification once the user successfully drafts the player(s) to his team.
In order for the user to build a winning team, the user has to be able to think fast and be cognizant of not only his/her own team but also the status of the roster of other teams in a league in which the user is a member as well as the various players statistics who are or will be on the auction block, all at the same time. Knowledge of the other teams roster would aid the user in developing strategies for building his/her own team during the actual draft. Conventional draft applications allowed the user to view the statistics of each of the players and each of the teams one at a time. The problem with conventional draft applications is that it was time consuming and the user had to be able to retain all the information gathered over time. Further, such information tend to change based on the updates to the players or the teams statistics adding additional burden on the user. In a time driven application, such as the auction draft, the user has very little time and does not have the luxury to do in-depth timed research during the draft.
It would be beneficial for the user to be able to gather the information on the players and the teams in a quick manner and be able to compare the status of all the teams in a league in order to make fast and informed decision during the draft.
It is in this context that the embodiments of the invention arise.